Restorations

I was stopped in the street this morning by a local man.  He asked me if I knew where he could get an old photo scanned and printed, so I gave him my suggestion.  He then told me that the photo was ripped and warped and water damaged and might need some restoration.  He also told me that he needed it done by this weekend for his brother-in-law's 70th birthday.

I had no idea where he could get that done in our area, but straight away I thought that I could give it a go with an editing program, so I agreed to pick up the photo this afternoon.

I rode to his house, just around the corner, at 3pm and was presented with a very old photo.  An old sepia toned photo that had been painted over with colour (it was quite popular in professional photography in the 40s) and it was glued to a heavy cardboard backing.

The photo had been behind glass in an old frame for many years and then held in storage for the last 7 yrs.  It was water damaged which warped and stained the cardboard backing and it looked like it may have stuck to the frame because there were a few large patches of torn photo around the edges.

Here is the 'before' photo...

I spent about an hour touching it up with a really simple and free online editing program called Picmonkey - because I'm still not confident with photoshop.  I used cloning to fill the bottom of the photo and fill in the rounded corners.  Here is the 'after' photo ...

I'm quite pleased with the result, considering that it's my first attempt to restore an old photo.  I think the gentleman will be pleased as well.  I quite enjoyed the process too.

Got another big day tomorrow.  Morning tea with the girls, a trip into Maryborough and my brother will be dropping in here on his way back up north.

So, I'm off to bed.

Nite all.